The cocktail of toxins in snake venom experienced constant change with pulses of rapid evolution over the last 60 million years, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Venom, the researchers report, has changed … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members
Tag Archives: speciation
Snake venom evolved in fits and spurts
Categories: Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged diversification, phylogenetics, RNA expression, snake, speciation, toxin, venom
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Journal Club: Butterflies get diversity boost from associations with ants, plants
Harvard University evolutionary biologist Naomi Pierce began studying Lycaenidae butterflies as a graduate student in the 1980s. But only recently has she accumulated enough data, from her team’s work and others’, to begin to address the question that has long … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged ants, butterfly, caterpillars, diversity, evolution, genetic drift, macroevolution, molecular evolution, speciation
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Journal Club: Analysis of bony fishes suggests convergent evolution is more prevalent than previously thought
Habitats and environmental pressures shape a variety of animal morphologies and behaviors over vast evolutionary time scales. These environmental pressures can sometimes produce nearly identical traits, even in completely unrelated lineages. This phenomenon, called convergent evolution, results in modern species that appear very similar despite … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Evolution | Journal Club | Statistics
Tagged bony fishes, convergent evolution, habitat, phenotypes, speciation, species
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Journal Club: Fruit fly hybrids make poor foragers, offering insight into how species remain distinct
When one fruit fly species meets another, they sometimes interbreed. And yet despite this genetic mixing, distinct species still persist—over 2,000 of them. Evolutionary biologist Daniel Matute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club | Uncategorized
Tagged behavior, drosophila, evolution, fruit fly, hybrid, speciation, species
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